


fahrenheit

by inverse



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Team 7 - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-03-14
Updated: 2006-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-31 12:05:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/343853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverse/pseuds/inverse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>this is when talking becomes useless.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fahrenheit

It is sunny the day Sasuke dies. Death by drowning – they found him with the three o’clock sunlight sliding off his skin (grey, slimy, bloated, weed-washed). They’d cleared the ANBU three weeks ago on the grounds that he hadn’t any strength left to be a physical threat, on the grounds that he hadn’t had any strength left to actually do anything. It was something inevitable, really. Tsunade had said so herself – they were only trying to lengthen his life on a day-by-day basis, feeding him chakra and medicine and keeping him under observation, trying to stop the curse seal from eating him away. Thank goodness he still isn’t dead, let’s see how tomorrow goes.

At three twenty-five Naruto bursts into the room expecting a crowd, a team of medic-nin inserting tiny tubes into Sasuke to draw out the water, pumping the water out of his chest, finding only Sakura with her back to him, looking out the window with her arms folded. In the middle of the room there is a body with white cloth draped over it. He counts to ten. No rise and fall of the chest.

“Three ten,” Sakura says quite suddenly, as if she’d noticed he was there all along but just couldn’t come up with words and so chose to be harsh and biting and bitter, “confirmed dead at three ten.” Says it with her palms over her arms so tight her knuckles are white, clutching at them like she’s going to fall over and there isn’t anything else to support her. Somehow it makes him feel like he should care more for her than for Sasuke, more for the living than the dead, but now he can’t give a damn because he is just as weak as she is as he lifts the cloth with an arm that feels like lead.

The expression on Sasuke’s face is ironically peaceful. He feels the mad urge to punch it off permanently, knowing it won’t happen, so that is what he does, grabbing Sasuke’s body by the neck and shaking him violently, hoping it forces the water out of his lungs, strangles the cold, transparent skin at the neck to make him choke up. He imagines Sasuke bleeding water out of his lips, water threaded with blood. _Wake up, you bastard, you aren’t supposed to die like this –_

“It’s no use,” Sakura finally blurts out after what seems like an eternity of trying, her voice breaking up in gasps and little breaths, underwater blurbs. “He’s not coming back,” and at that moment Naruto realises that if Sakura says so then that’s the case, and there is no point trying to argue that he’s going to make Sasuke come back to life like he argued that he was going to bring Sasuke back so many years ago, because Sasuke is, however inexplicably, not living and not breathing, but unmistakeably and irrevocably dead.

 

 

 

“So you’re saying,” Naruto argues later, this close to hauling Kiba up by the front of his shirt and beating the crap out of him, “that he didn’t need saving because he was going to die anyway?”, and Kiba sighs and takes deep breaths as if he had explained it to Naruto a million times but he just wouldn’t listen, which was partly true.

“The next time he goes out, make sure he tells us first,” Kiba snarls, and in the blink of an eye Naruto has him pressed against the wall with his hands around Kiba’s neck, just like in the room with Sasuke just now. He wants so much to yell, wants to throw a tantrum and scream and shout things like “There is no more next time because he’s already dead,” but settles for breathing hard instead (because he can’t, he just feels like he can’t), and says, “He was our friend, Kiba –”

“But he wasn’t everyone’s friend,” Kiba interrupts, sounding like he’s going to run out of breath too, and Naruto allows his grip to go slack. Kiba then pries his hands off, apologising quietly like he said the wrong thing, but his words ring in Naruto’s ears – Sasuke was their friend but not everyone’s friend, Sasuke only had them as friends, and now that Sasuke had mysteriously disappeared and then turned up dead in a ditch, he didn’t need friends anymore. He thinks, _Of course he was going to leave you again._

And then Shikamaru walks out of Tsunade’s office, shuts the door with a final-sounding click, the look on his face telling Naruto that he’s heard every single thing that they said. Naruto thinks he couldn’t be any more stupid than this until Shikamaru turns to them and says wearily, “Go home. There’s nothing you can do.” He had wanted so much to believe that at least someone would have wanted to do something about it.

 

 

 

Sakura goes home after they take the body away for further inspection. “He’ll be in one piece after this, won’t he,” she’d asked the medic-nin in charge, and he’d stared at her strangely like he wanted to say, “You’re a medic-nin yourself, shouldn’t you know?” but instead said, “Probably, but he’s dead anyway.” Nothing has ever made her want to hit anyone so hard before.

When she opens the door the phone is ringing continuously, urgently, ringing like it won’t stop even if the sky fell. It’s got to be something serious because people don’t call her so often anymore. Maybe it’s Ino, calling up to demand what the hell happened to Sasuke, because although bad news travel far and wide and quick as lightning, anything that happens to Sasuke nearly always points fingers to her. Or maybe it’s Sasuke’s family, calling up to ask just what had – and then she remembers. Sasuke doesn’t (didn’t, she corrects herself, strangely sober) have a family, which is for the most part the main reason why –

The phone stops ringing. Sakura makes herself a cup of coffee and waits for it to ring again, sitting down on the couch and tracing circles around the rim of the cup until it squeaks, and her fingertip turns warm from all the vapour. Eventually she falls asleep.

At seven p.m. she wakes up to a shaft of sunlight sifting through the gap in the curtains. The same shaft of sunlight sifting in through the window in the hospital, the same shaft of sunlight when they brought Sasuke in. When she peels the curtains apart like a plaster comes off wet skin, she sees Naruto in the distance, pacing across the ground, throwing stones into the pond, squatting down and generally being miserable, she thinks she should shout, “Naruto, Naruto, I have something to say to you –” but realises only after a while that her voicebox has somehow vanished.

(The truth is: Just when she's about to doze off, the phone rings again. It's Kakashi sounding like he's got a throat that won't work, speaking like he's trying not to give away any secrets. Vague, short, to-the-point. “Don't worry about the inspection, they won't do anything much about it. Naruto nearly beat up that guy from the other team, what's his name, and he's going home now.” All she has to do is reply with ‘OK’s to his every sentence, and it feels familiarly comfortable. Then he pauses, clears his throat, and says, “You should get some rest. It's been a long day.” She hangs up.)

(The other truth is: She doesn't want to wake up. In Konoha summer days are long and warm and lazy. If she sleeps more maybe she will see the sun less. It doesn't count as lying if it's only temporary disillusionment.)

 

 

 

On the day of the funeral itself the sun seems to have launched into a serious dispute with Konoha, scorching anything that walks into its path. Welcome to Konoha Village, bright and sunny 24/7. Naruto rolls up the sleeves of the black costume they’re all supposed to wear because it feels like it’s melting into his skin under the heat. When he’s done Kiba raises his eyebrows and says, “That’s kind of disrespectful, you know,” and to defend himself he only sticks out his tongue and replies, “The bastard wouldn’t have cared.”

Several meters away the girls are all huddled in a group, tight and inseparable. Many of them are carrying umbrellas, black parasols. Nobody is crying, nobody is sobbing; all of them are silent. Naruto had expected a ruckus of some sort, at least from Ino, and all this silence is making him uncomfortable. In the middle of the group Sakura stands with her face pale but set and her hands are red and white around the edges from clasping too hard, and Naruto thinks she looks very pretty today – wrongly so, because nobody should be looking pretty or feeling happy at a funeral.

Hinata turns around then and stares at him like she’s sensed him watching – of course he has, he’s been watching since the whole thing started – he suddenly feels guilty for no good reason – he turns away. 

Later as they bury Sasuke, when no one’s noticing, he counts the number of people present. With his hands he can count all the males and with his toes he can count all the females. _Sasuke, you moron,_ he thinks, _no one likes you._ Then he watches the last of Sasuke go down into the ground with his fists clenched by his side because saying anything at this moment would be inappropriate. It feels like a mirage – blurring over like an instant photograph, blurring over time. Unreal.

When it’s all over and everyone is streaming away awkwardly, Iruka comes up to Naruto and begins, “Naruto, I think – ” but Naruto finishes the sentence for him: “Yeah, I know, he was going to be dead anyway, everyone’s been telling me that. I’m fine. Really.” For a while Iruka looks at him as if he’s slightly lost for words, and Naruto regrets saying that – he didn’t mean it that way. Then Iruka gives him a tired smile and says, “Well, go home then, I’m sure you’ve been tired.” Elsewhere Kakashi is talking to Sakura, and Naruto assumes they’re having the same conversation.

As if going home would make everything alright. He thanks Iruka anyway.

 

 

 

Fifth day of July. There are no clouds, there is only sun. We walk around the rim of the pond like aimless travellers and I stretch my arms out so I won’t fall. Imaginary tightrope walker. I know I won’t fall but doing so makes me feel silly, younger, so it’s okay. Perhaps I’m expecting a smile from you, who knows?

These days we’ve been walking more often. At first you couldn’t even manage three rounds. Now you can do ten without stopping. It’s a little alarming, but this is the Sasuke I know, this is the Sasuke who throws punches without asking, who’d rather die than tell me he’s giving up. This is the Sasuke whom I’m familiar with and I won’t have it any other way.

“We’re not stopping yet, idiot,” you say, sweat beading your forehead and your breath coming in suppressed gasps. The bandage on your left arm threatens to unravel itself, loose, tinged orange in the light. This is not pity and this is not cruelty – I am supposed to jeer at you and laugh and walk on because it’s the only thing you would want me to do. Only, you trip over yourself and fall onto me and I fall into the pond instead. Rules and regulations: you do not apologise, I do not ask if you’re alright, I am supposed to yell, “You stupid fucking – ” and you’re supposed to glare and stand up shakily, your feet forced from paralysis. I will smell of seaweed all day. July the fifth.

Dreaming about a dead friend is not uncommon, but what Naruto realises when he wakes up with his mind in a whirl and his stomach in his chest is that his face is wetter than that stupid pond. He feels sick, buries his head into his pillow and tries to think of other things, like ramen. All he sees is Sasuke’s face and that dumb bandage over his left hand – burnt it when he tried to force chidori out of it the first day he returned, when he tried to attack Naruto with it.

 

 

 

Fact: 

According to the water cycle, water evaporates from the ground and later condenses in the colder atmosphere to form clouds. When they get too heavy it rains.

Fact: 

The warmer it is, the faster water evaporates. It follows that rain clouds form faster.

Fact: 

Konoha in July averages 31°C. There hasn’t been any rainfall in two weeks. There hasn’t been any rainfall since Sasuke died, and this in itself is probably a miracle. (To Sakura, anyway, because she’d dedicated her final graduating year in the academy to learning the correlation between weather and battle tactics, did a study on the levels of rainfall for months and months. There is no way she does not know this is illogical.)

 

 

 

“I don’t know what he really liked,” Sakura says, dipping her hand into the river. “Naruto – do you know what he really liked?”

Naruto shakes his head, averting his eyes from Sakura even though she isn’t even looking at him. Misery loves company. All they had wanted to do was to talk and all they had ended up doing was sitting by the river with their pants rolled up to their knees. From here the river looks shallower than it really is. Maybe if they soaked their feet in long enough it would feel as if Sasuke was still there. Naruto doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything half the time anyway.

“I know what he liked,” Sakura continues. “Those afternoons which you spent walking by the pond barefooted.” Inwardly Naruto squirms. Then Sakura shifts herself closer to him, inches herself sideways so that her side fits snugly into Naruto’s like a jigsaw, and suddenly he finds himself immobile because if he moves anymore –

“If I pretended you were Sasuke-kun right now,” Sakura whispers, “what would you do?” and Naruto knows only one thing right now. “This is not funny, Sakura,” he responds so softly that he hardly thinks she can hear him, but across this distance there is no need to say anything at all. When she finally leans in he imagines bandages over her slender wrist. In the dead summer heat all he can hear is the trickle of downstream water.


End file.
